Home > Authors Index > Oliver Wendell Holmes > Mortal Antipathy > This page
A Mortal Antipathy, a novel by Oliver Wendell Holmes |
||
XX. DR. BUTTS REFLECTS |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ XX. DR. BUTTS REFLECTS Dr. Butts sat up late at night reading these papers and reflecting upon them. He was profoundly impressed and tenderly affected by the entire frankness, the absence of all attempt at concealment, which Maurice showed in placing these papers at his disposal. He believed that his patient would recover from this illness for which he had been taking care of him. He thought deeply and earnestly of what he could do for him after he should have regained his health and strength. There were references, in Maurice's own account of himself, which the doctor called to mind with great interest after reading his brief autobiography. Some one person--some young woman, it must be--had produced a singular impression upon him since those earlier perilous experiences through which he had passed. The doctor could not help thinking of that meeting with Euthymia of which she had spoken to him. Maurice, as she said, turned pale,--he clapped his hand to his breast. He might have done so if he had met her chambermaid, or any straggling damsel of the village. But Euthymia was not a young woman to be looked upon with indifference. She held herself like a queen, and walked like one, not a stage queen, but one born and bred to self-reliance, and command of herself as well as others. One could not pass her without being struck with her noble bearing and spirited features. If she had known how Maurice trembled as he looked upon her, in that conflict of attraction and uncontrollable dread,--if she had known it! But what, even then, could she have done? Nothing but get away from him as fast as she could. As it was, it was a long time before his agitation subsided, and his heart beat with its common force and frequency. Dr. Butts was not a male gossip nor a matchmaking go-between. But he could not help thinking what a pity it was that these two young persons could not come together as other young people do in the pairing season, and find out whether they cared for and were fitted for each other. He did not pretend to settle this question in his own mind, but the thought was a natural one. And here was a gulf between them as deep and wide as that between Lazarus and Dives. Would it ever be bridged over? This thought took possession of the doctor's mind, and he imagined all sorts of ways of effecting some experimental approximation between Maurice and Euthymia. From this delicate subject he glanced off to certain general considerations suggested by the extraordinary history he had been reading. He began by speculating as to the possibility of the personal presence of an individual making itself perceived by some channel other than any of the five senses. The study of the natural sciences teaches those who are devoted to them that the most insignificant facts may lead the way to the discovery of the most important, all-pervading laws of the universe. From the kick of a frog's hind leg to the amazing triumphs which began with that seemingly trivial incident is a long, a very long stride if Madam Galvani had not been in delicate health, which was the occasion of her having some frog-broth prepared for her, the world of to-day might not be in possession of the electric telegraph and the light which blazes like the sun at high noon. A common-looking occurrence, one seemingly unimportant, which had hitherto passed unnoticed with the ordinary course of things, was the means of introducing us to a new and vast realm of closely related phenomena. It was like a key that we might have picked up, looking so simple that it could hardly fit any lock but one of like simplicity, but which should all at once throw back the bolts of the one lock which had defied the most ingenious of our complex implements and open our way into a hitherto unexplored territory. It certainly was not through the eye alone that Maurice felt the paralyzing influence. He could contemplate Euthymia from a distance, as he did on the day of the boat-race, without any nervous disturbance. A certain proximity was necessary for the influence to be felt, as in the case of magnetism and electricity. An atmosphere of danger surrounded every woman he approached during the period when her sex exercises its most powerful attractions. How far did that atmosphere extend, and through what channel did it act? The key to the phenomena of this case, he believed, was to be found in a fact as humble as that which gave birth to the science of galvanism and its practical applications. The circumstances connected with the very common antipathy to cats were as remarkable in many points of view as the similar circumstances in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The subjects of that antipathy could not tell what it was which disturbed their nervous system. All they knew was that a sense of uneasiness, restlessness, oppression, came over them in the presence of one of these animals. He remembered the fact already mentioned, that persons sensitive to this impression can tell by their feelings if a cat is concealed in the apartment in which they may happen to be. It may be through some emanation. It may be through the medium of some electrical disturbance. What if the nerve-thrills passing through the whole system of the animal propagate themselves to a certain distance without any more regard to intervening solids than is shown by magnetism? A sieve lets sand pass through it; a filter arrests sand, but lets fluids pass, glass holds fluids, but lets light through; wood shuts out light, but magnetic attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No good reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not betray itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a box in which the animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories which allege such an occurrence as a fact and a not very infrequent one. If the presence of a cat can produce its effects under these circumstances, why should not that of a human being under similar conditions, acting on certain constitutions, exercise its specific influence? The doctor recalled a story told him by one of his friends, a story which the friend himself heard from the lips of the distinguished actor, the late Mr. Fechter. The actor maintained that Rachel had no genius as an actress. It was all Samson's training and study, according to him, which explained the secret of her wonderful effectiveness on the stage. But magnetism, he said,--magnetism, she was full of. He declared that he was made aware of her presence on the stage, when he could not see her or know of her presence otherwise, by this magnetic emanation. The doctor took the story for what it was worth. There might very probably be exaggeration, perhaps high imaginative coloring about it, but it was not a whit more unlikely than the cat-stories, accepted as authentic. He continued this train of thought into further developments. Into this series of reflections we will try to follow him. What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them like a luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation, which reminds us of Milton's definition of light: "Bright effluence of bright essence increate"? The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the existence of its correlative, effluence. There is no good reason that I can see, the doctor said to himself, why among the forces which work upon the nervous centres there should not be one which acts at various distances from its source. It may not be visible like the "glory" of the painters, it may not be appreciable by any one of the five senses, and yet it may be felt by the person reached by it as much as if it were a palpable presence,--more powerfully, perhaps, from the mystery which belongs to its mode of action. Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him, just as the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of their presence through some unknown channel? Is it anything strange that the larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a consciousness of its presence to some distance as well as the slighter and feebler one? Is it strange that this mysterious influence or effluence should belong especially or exclusively to the period of complete womanhood in distinction from that of immaturity or decadence? On the contrary, it seems to be in accordance with all the analogies of nature,--analogies too often cruel in the sentence they pass upon the human female. Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor's mind was this, which made him smile as if it were a jest, but which he felt very strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the happiness or suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die without telling their secret: How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they never overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which draws man towards her, as strong in them as in others,--oftentimes, in virtue of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in them than in others of like age and conditions,--in consequence of which fear, this attraction is completely neutralized, and all the possibilities of doubled and indefinitely extended life depending upon it are left unrealized! Think what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior who had faced bayonets and batteries becomes a coward whom the well-dressed hero of the ball-room and leader of the German will put to ignominious flight in five minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with his lady-love. Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I have seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I have seen the malady many times. Only one word has stood between many a pair of young people and their lifelong happiness, and that word has got as far as the lips, but the lips trembled and would not, could not, shape that little word. All young women are not like Coleridge's Genevieve, who knew how to help her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes before he had asked for an answer. So the wave which was to have wafted them on to the shore of Elysium has just failed of landing them, and back they have been drawn into the desolate ocean to meet no more on earth. Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!--not only the historic wonder of beauty, that "burnt the topless towers of Ilium" for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled around her. The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and pictorial imagery. Drifting along from thought to thought, he reflected on the probable consequences of the general knowledge of Maurice Kirkwood's story, if it came before the public. What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the village, to be sure! What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments, what fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer got hold of it, how "The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor" would blaze with capitals in its next issue! The young fellows' of the place would be disposed to make fun of the whole matter. The young girls-the doctor hardly dared to think what would happen when the story got about among them. "The Sachem" of the solitary canoe, the bold horseman, the handsome hermit,--handsome so far as the glimpses they had got of him went,--must needs be an object of tender interest among them, now that he was ailing, suffering, in danger of his life, away from friends,--poor fellow! Little tokens of their regard had reached his sick-chamber; bunches of flowers with dainty little notes, some of them pinkish, some three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others "criss-crossed," were growing more frequent as it was understood that the patient was likely to be convalescent before many days had passed. If it should come to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle to their coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had his doubts whether there were not those who would subject him to the risk; for there were coquettes in the village,--strangers, visitors, let us hope,--who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and love of conquest. _ |
||